Taking issue with the argument that, after decentralisation, control is embodied within the protocols of networks, Harry Halpin gives a historical account of the all-too-human actors vying for power over the net. Not technical standards but immaterial aristocrats rule cyberspace and their seats of power are vulnerable to revolutionary attack

Courtesy of the Financial Times, the latest news on the financial sector's most self-allegorizing activity: death hedging.  Or more prosaically, the develpment of 'longevity derivatives' and associated indices, through which fund managers can hedge against the risk that people (not to speak of broker-dealers) might not die soon enough.  In this update, Deutsche Börse has introduced live (so to speak) data feeds from undertakers to find out the age of the bodies they bury.

Death data drive new market

The development of longevity indices is helping pension funds assess risk, says Sophia Grene.

Deutsche Börse, the German stock exchange, has set up live data feeds from undertakers to find out what age people are when they die.  It is using the data, along with official mortality statistics, in its new Xpect data and index package, designed to help insurers and pension funds calculate their longevity and mortality risks.

We are standing on the brink of an immense revelation. The revelation of people to states. In the UK – the surveillance workshop of the world – people are becoming increasingly visible through IT projects like the Electronic Patients Record and the National Identity Register, as well as a forthcoming points-based immigration regime premised on the ability to identify subjects and then track and cross-reference their data as never before. Joining-up data, and hence governance, is the name of the game. What are the implications then of this dangerous regime of identity capture, assessment, and tracking for political demands for representation and rights? What are the risks and advantages of visibility, of joining the demos, when identification by the state triggers joined-up ‘knowledge’, often with punitive results?

It’s not just the founders of hippy communes or artists like Amy Balkin who are looking for ‘a breathing space from the State’ in which to experiment with freedom and free-time. Big IT companies like Google apparently share their ideals. With a commitment to ‘me time’, the production of ‘universal access’, and (energy) sovereignty, corporates are leveraging the dream of the commons

Public Domain

Having come full circle in half a century, today British citizens stand on the brink of having their 'fundamental rights and freedoms' enshrined in the plasticated chip of a compulsory ID card. But what, asks Martin Twomey of the Hackney NO2ID Group, is this card for exactly and whose interests does it serve?

This man walks into a bar... a bar I happened to be in a few months ago. The conversation turned to identity cards and he told me about his elderly parents’ recollections of WWII identity cards. They spoke of the British public a few years after the war ended becoming fed up with growing intrusion and harassment, with every jobs-worth official from post office clerks to railway porters, bus inspectors to bobbies on the beat constantly demanding people’s identity cards. They told of people gathering in the streets to burn their cards in defiance of what had come to symbolise an overbearing and ever more intrusive state.

Launched in July 2006, Norfolk Open Link is the largest community wireless broadband network in the UK and is apparently the only network in the UK that offers free mobile internet access for public sector employees, the business community and the general public.  The network covers much of Norwich city centre and other 'key' locations including the University of East Anglia and Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.  It is managed by Norfolk County Council and is fully funded by the East of England Development Agency (EEDA).  The following links describe the project in more detail: 

http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/7064

http://www.norfolkopenlink.com/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5297884.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5305076.stm

The info-technological development of Africa is providing a critical laboratory for testing the utilitarian and egalitarian claims of the FLOSS community. The question of whether to adopt a free or proprietary route quickly expands beyond the immediate consideration of set up costs. Soenke Zehle considers how FLOSS fares in the competition to be the fittest 'tropical' technology, assesses different visions of continent-wide development, and examines FLOSS's own ambiguous economics

This year the Ars Electronica festival glimpsed the future through the past.
Michelle Kasprzak reports 

In 1979, Ars Electronica was born. The concept was to produce an innovative festival that would integrate art, technology and society as major themes in its workshops, symposia, and concerts. 25 years later, what started off as a small but ambitious festival has transformed the city of Linz from an industrial city into a culture capital, and become the Oscars of the electronic art world. But what has really changed in a quarter century for this behemoth of festivals?

By bestowing this year’s festival with the theme of Timeshift: The World in 25 Years, it appears that the Ars organisers were not interested in becoming overly nostalgic. Rather, the theme suggests that the 25th Ars Electronica would unfold in keeping with the innovative spirit that sparked the genesis of the festival, endeavouring to put a finger on what the next 25 years will hold, not just for Ars, but for electronic art itself.

If you thought the browser wars of old were all washed up, think again. With Apple, Mozilla and Opera all getting together to develop HTML based web applications, argues Danny O’Brien, it looks like Microsoft could be left in the shade

I've always felt there weren't enough Cosmopolitan-style personality tests in Mute. Take a look at the three boxes on the facing page. Pick the one you find most reassuring. After you've done that, I'll draw some specious conclusions about the current battle between Microsoft and the rest of the world, and why that Browser War people endlessly banged on about in the ’90s isn't quite over yet.

Morality and Immortality - the games industry under siege